I said material nonlinearities, not material imperfections.
Precisely what I said.
But maybe headphones do commonly have significant nonlinearities
Dynamic drivers have these. Most cases and housings introduce these. Amplifiers have these. Until recently we could only determine if people can consciously hear things or not. Determining if something affects your perception is something else entirely. Also, with something you wear like a headphone, it's more expensive to do blind comparisons.
Basically, the system we're dealing with (including the human hearing apparatus) is pretty complex. While we've made significant inroads into the science, we still don't understand everything that goes on when someone listens to reproduced music. I think this is about to change, however. There are some things coming down the pike, where we are going to have unprecedented control of variables we didn't even think to address.
Here's one of the first baby steps: A headphone that does a frequency sweep inside the cups to compensate for the acoustic filtering of your particular ear!
Precisely what I said.
But maybe headphones do commonly have significant nonlinearities
Dynamic drivers have these. Most cases and housings introduce these. Amplifiers have these. Until recently we could only determine if people can consciously hear things or not. Determining if something affects your perception is something else entirely. Also, with something you wear like a headphone, it's more expensive to do blind comparisons.
Basically, the system we're dealing with (including the human hearing apparatus) is pretty complex. While we've made significant inroads into the science, we still don't understand everything that goes on when someone listens to reproduced music. I think this is about to change, however. There are some things coming down the pike, where we are going to have unprecedented control of variables we didn't even think to address.
Here's one of the first baby steps: A headphone that does a frequency sweep inside the cups to compensate for the acoustic filtering of your particular ear!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55tJzO-_D10